Sunday, August 31, 2008

As I take a break from balancing my checkbook, I can't help but think how much I love me some suburban living. I think that nothing exemplifies the life than Labor Day weekend. I had originally planned to possibly go golfing or hang out at the lake (albeit sans boat), but it seems like neither is going to materialize. Instead, I am likely going to do most of the following:

Water the lawn

Balance the checkbook

Help with laundry

Mow the lawn

Wash the car

Grill something outside while drinking a beer

Go shopping for some running supplies

To most people who are reading this, I think that it may sound like a wasted weekend. However, I relish in the fact that I can find enjoyment in such mundane tasks. Maybe I am just easy to please (which may very well be the case). However, it is probably more that I am just getting OLD.

13 miles, 8:30 pace. The most bizarre thing happened to me during this run. My right foot went completely numb. Now, this has happened before. The solution to regain some sort of feeling in my foot was to take my shoe off and fix my sock which had for some reason become bunched up underneath my foot. This time, however, my sock was bunched up. So, I waited for approximately 5 minutes (I really should have looked to see how long it actually was) for my foot to regain some sort of feeling. I then started back off running. Oddly, it happened again but this time I just decided to run through it.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Tera recently bought a 3G iPhone. Up until recently, I have been able to hold back my raging jealously towards everyone who has iPhones because they were the first generation style. (Which is an accomplishment in itself. Including the Instinct, I think that there are 4 or 5 iPhone or iPhone clones on my team!!) Previously, the phones did not have high speed internet via cellular connection. The new iPhone however, does. Not only does it have that, but it also has everything else that you have come to know and love about iPhones: iPod? Check. Sync with email? Check. Video playback? Check. GAH

So, what is a guy to do? The same thing that any 7 year old guy does when he likes something……. He makes fun of it. For every cool application or fun game that she finds, I try in vain to make fun of it even more. For the time being, it seems to be working, however I’m quickly running out of things to say.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Please get rid of those STUPID little triangle water cups in the gym. I realize that paying the extra $4 per year on normal paper cups may cause your entire organization to go under, but it is worth it. After running, I get lazy and only drink two of the stupid little triangle deals. This then makes me dehydrated for the rest of the day. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give up one of the 80 pillows that you put on the bed for the better cups. Deal?

Last night the team and I all went to the new movie Tropic Thunder. Honestly, this movie was quite a bit better than I thought it was going to be. I had heard very mixed reviews (more bad than good) so I was very tentative on even going. However, a number of people in the office convinced me to go – and I am glad that I did.

The movie is ½ spoof (think ‘Scary Movie’) and ½ comedy/action flick starting Ben Stiller among others. The movie was very funny in some spots but a little cheesy in others. Overall, the funny spots win due mostly in part to some very crude high school level humor. I could see 17 year old Adam LOVING this movie and not even questioning going to it again. (On a side note, Ben Stiller was RIPPED in this movie. I need to know what he did to get that big. After all, if he can get that big, then there is hope for even me.)

Either way, if you don’t want to have to think and you want to see some stuff explode, then Tropic Thunder is probably worth your time. Now, whether or not any more is worth the $45 that it costs to go to the theatre is a different post all together.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I’m having a bit of an Office Space moment at the client site. I have a ‘corner cube’. Not because I am particularly important, but because my primary client interface is very important and I need to be within earshot of her. That said, I have approximately 5 floor to ceiling windows that I can see from my cube. One would think that I would have all sorts of sunshine beaming into my cube helping me pass the day, right? WRONG Every single window in this place seems to have their shades drawn. Hallways between cubes? Closed. Personal offices? Closed. I don’t get it! I feel like I am in the basement or something!!

Of course, I could quite easily open all of the shades and try to let some of the sunshine in. However, for some reason when I do this, I come back to my cube to find that they are all closed again. So, someone obviously doesn’t want them open for whatever reason. I think that my client may be hiring vampires.

Why is it that whenever I lose my internet connection, the only things I can think of doing involves the internet? "hmm, internet is down... I should check my e-... crap, I wonder if this is national I should check google ne... damn it, well at least I can go watch some por... F**K"

Depending on who you ask, I am either a forward looking progressive man or a suburban husband. I was talking to a coworker of mine who is expecting his first baby about naming said baby (Adam or Adam-ina are always my top choices) when he mentioned that the baby would certainly have his last name. Of course, this meant that his wife did not take his last name when they got married 4 years ago. Fortunately, he was totally cool with this, so everything worked out in the end and I am sure that they will live happily ever after.

Now, I have no logical reasoning for my thoughts, however I am very strongly against my wife not taking my last name. Luckily, when the time came for me to get married, this wasn’t an issue – my wife gladly took my name and all was right with the world. However, it did get me thinking as to what I would have done if she didn’t want to take the last name. Would I have had a fit and required it as part of joining my “family unit”? Probably not, but it makes me wonder. Now that I think about it more, there certainly would have been some ‘heated discussions’ about the issue. :)

I also wonder what the driver is for a woman’s preference on not taking her husband’s last name. I expect that it has something to do with her personal identity etc. I can respect that in the sense that I certainly don’t want to change MY name.

Finally, (as if there wasn’t enough rambling in this post) a male member of the account team that I am on changed HIS name before he had kids because his name was slightly derogatory. I honestly respect his decision a lot. I am not sure that I would have had the chutzpah to do that.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Our car (originally my car) has been with us for nearly 8 years. It was coming up on 100,000 miles which means, other than being another digit on the odometer, that there is quite a bit of additional routine maintenance that is required. So, on Saturday we took in the car and braced ourselves for the damage. Overall it wasn’t too bad, but it still hurt.

The check engine light was on. It cost $80 to just look at the code to determine what the issue was. REALLY!? I am by no means a car expert, but I am not a novice either, so I know that this takes only 10 minutes. Either way, I’m glad I did pay it, because it found that one of my cylinders wasn’t firing correctly because of a bad spark plug. Plugs, wires, and a new gasket (Oh and must we forget $200) later, all was right with the world. Also, at 100,000 miles, a transmission flush is required. Honestly, I wasn’t too sure about this (not only because it was $160). But, now that it is done, it was probably money well spent. Finally, we had them change the oil and perform some other miscellaneous items. Total bill: $600.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t too bad. I mean, it is just 1.5 months of payments on our other car, but it was still an expense that I wasn’t really planning on. Honestly, I really wish that I could get an electric car. It seems that there would be a lot fewer moving parts in something like that.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Boy, what a ride. It is interesting how much my stocks have ebbed and flowed over the past two months. I have had swings of 10% in the red, and 5% in the black. Currently, I am at a very healthy 2% black. This is especially encouraging since I am 20% vested in BAC. Granted, the Bank of America stock has been the cause of most of my stock turbulence. I am still very hopeful that they don’t cut their very healthy dividend.

I am still hemming and hawing over my decision to go with Scottrade for my primary investment account. I have been hearing more and more about Zecco and their free dividend reinvestment services. The more I learn about stock trading, the more I am realizing that I see myself as more of a buy and hold stock investor than a day trader. I really don’t like to have multiple accounts floating around everywhere, so I’ll likely stick with Scottrade. The $7 per trade that they charge (even for dividend reinvestment) is really nominal in the grand scheme of things. After all, I DID spend $3.50 on coffee and milk at Starbucks today.

19 miles, 8:40 pace. Sunday’s run was a good one if not a little bit slower than I would have liked. I wasn’t able to run on Saturday because it was lightning / thundering pretty bad so I didn’t want to get zapped.

On a side note, I think that I may try to bundle these running posts as not to clutter up my blog with 20 posts per month. That is, unless I can’t think of any other things to write about….

If you require five creams and four sugars, you should probably come to terms with the fact that you don't like coffee.

Since i was 12 years old, my dream was to drive a Ferrari. I found a guy who will let me drive his Ferrari, but I can am only allowed to drive it for one day, and I have to pay him $5000 for the privilege. Actually, theres a guy with an even nicer Ferrari for $6000, which I can also drive for one day. I need that one instead. I can't settle for the $5000 one anymore. Doing this would make me so happy. Sure, I may seem like a selfish, money wasting sucker. However, change the word "Ferrari" to "Wedding Dress" and suddenly I'm not the only one.

I wanted to follow up Chapter one of the husband manual with another chapter that is just as important. Chapter two will focus on teaching husbands when to just shut up and not say a word. I was GOING to say shut up and listen, but honestly listening isn’t as important as not saying anything at all.

This is most important when a wife is presenting a problem. Conventional wisdom would suggest that she would want her issue solved. Oh no. If anything, the husband manual will systematically explain how conventional wisdom almost never applies when it comes to women. For guys, CW says that if another guy is complaining about something, you help them fix it. It doesn’t matter if the guy complaining is the US Ambassador to the Ukraine and the issue is with foreign relations – every guy has some input that he can share. However, when a woman is presenting a problem, it is usually just to vent. Again, I don’t care if your wife is having trouble picking her backup running back for the weeks when Larry Johnson is not playing – do not try to solve her issue.

Rather than solving the issue, husbands should try saying some of these comments at regular intervals:

What do you think about that?

How does that make you feel?

I agree.

(Insert name of wife’s close friend here) is dumb.

Can you believe how cute Brad and Angelia's babies are?

Did you hear about that money truck that went by our house yesterday while you were sleeping?

5 miles, 8:15 pace. Today's run was a bit harder due to a number of factors:

It had just finished raining so the humidity was about 8000% (give or take)

I was closing out a series of 18 miles (37 on the week) and am pretty sore

After 3 days of getting up at 5:15, I am just generally tired

My hamstring has been giving me a bit of issues

HOWEVER, all of those are excuses and I will be running my 19 on Saturday. As my training peaks, it will really start to test me and my motivation to continue to crank out 'good' runs. Of course, I'll keep everyone posted!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I recently had a birthday. I used about half of my money to fill out my wine rack – literally. I added 12 additional bottles of all red wine. Most of these were daily drinkers (read: grocery store wine) which I like more than expensive wine because I don’t feel bad when I drink ½ a bottle in a sitting. Here is a picture of me and my brother in law celebrating our success:

Not bad for celebrating the fact that I didn't die over the last 365 days. Score one for me!

8 miles, 8 min pace. I ran on the treadmill again (I know, I know….) but I will be running outside tomorrow for my last segment before I hopefully knock out 19 miles. I will then go into a 13 mile / 20 mile rotation until 3 weeks before the race. Wee!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

As I sit here, listening to my arteries close, I wonder how healthy a “salad” has to be in order to qualify as a salad. I ordered a cobb salad which had TONS of creamy dressing on it, not to mention bacon, guacamole and fried chicken. But, it was pretty good! And, since it was mostly green (per my friend Caroline) then it has to be healthy – right!?

5 miles, 7:30 pace. Another treadmill run since I am in STL and am too lazy to go outside. The run went pretty well which is nice since it was yet another ratchet up in the overall distance.

However, I did forget to stretch back out after I was done. So, as I sit at my desk typing this blog post I am starting to get a little tight. Hopefully I can get some good stretching in throughout the day today. I think that I may go for a walk tonight around the hotel or restaurant or something to try to loosen up a bit as well. I suppose we’ll see how it goes during the run tomorrow morning.

Monday, August 18, 2008

September 1st is the end of my company’s (Accenture) fiscal year. In addition to being bombarded by surveys and year end congratulatory “win” emails, promotions and raises are announced. It would seem like an odd time of year to announce these types of things, but in all honesty it actually works out pretty well. In years past, I have known what my bonus will be almost 2 months before it is paid out. This is especially important because it is paid out around the end of October. This is generally when I get a lot of my Christmas shopping done so the extra cash always goes to a good home.

I recently informally learned that I will be promoted to the position of “Manager”. This was from the previous title of “Consultant”. It is actually a rather large promotion which will bring me slightly more into the lead development and management side of our work as opposed to the delivery side. Of course, that is what I assume is the case. I know slightly what expect, but not entirely.

Did anyone else notice the generic titles that Accenture has? I mean, Consultant? Manager? It is sort of like the organizations that use roman numerals for their titles. Worker I, Worker II, and Worker III do have a ring to them, but I doubt that anyone knows what the heck they mean.

I rarely use iTunes, but when I do, it seems like there is ALWAYS an update waiting for me to download. Not just any update either – always a 60 MB download that will undoubtedly make my computer even slower than it already is. What is up with that? Can there really be that much going on behind the scenes of a relatively simple program that would necessitate a massive download each and every week? I might still be venting from the fact that my iPod died, but I just don’t get it.

18 miles, 8:29 pace. Today's run went really well. It was quite a bit colder, so I didn't feel bad at all during the run. On a side note, I am also 1 mile ahead of the current schedule which should hopefully afford me at least one, if not two additional 20 mile runs.

Friday, August 15, 2008

It is official. I am still addicted to the Olympics. Last night, I got to watch Michael Phelps swim to his 6th 2008 Olympic gold as well as watch pieces of the girls (notice I didn't say women's) gymnastics win gold and sliver.

While I am sure that Olympic fatigue will soon set in, I can't get enough of it right now. For example of the fatigue, am I the only one who is tired of women's beach volleyball? I mean, I love watching women jump around in sand while wearing bikini's as much as the next guy, but do we really need 2 hours almost every night of this stuff?? Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs are amazing at what they do, but how many rounds until the gold are there?? NBC should project them as the winner like they do in elections and show Michael Phelps warming up in the pool or listening to his iPod or something. Maybe a live feed into a Michael Phelps webcam?

Either way, what these people are doing is amazing. Something that I could never do in a million years. However, for some reason I wonder if I were an Olympic athlete, would people be able to pronounce my last name right? Doubtful.....

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Based on my experience the following are true. Coffee makes you pee because of caffeine. Beer makes you pee because of alcohol.

As I understand it, caffeine is a stimulant, so it would make sense that it would speed up the flow of things. But why does alcohol have the same affect if it is a sedative? If anything, conventional wisdom should say that beer would make you pee LESS not more.

Overall, I think that I just pee way too much. I wonder if I could get some sort of extra bladder built into part of my body to store extra. That would certainly make for less peeing…..

8 miles, 7:58 pace. Today's run went really well. I think that I could have pretty easily went much further than the 8 miles dictated by my schedule. I saw quite a few people out and about which was comforting while running at 5:30 in the morning.

One thing that is a bit interesting is that the people out running seemed pretty serious about it. One guy had on a KC marathon T-Shirt for example. So, maybe it is just us crazies that are out at that time.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

As I have said previously, I was in Iowa for most of last week. It was really nice to spend some time with my dad's side of the family. I was able to golf, go out to eat, and I even got to help my dad put up a ceiling fan! Which, to most people, would seem like work - but I rather enjoyed it.

There was some confusion that I assume everyone who has moved to the city from a rural area has had to deal with. That is, the naming of meals. For me, I have three meals: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is not the case, however for just about everyone in Iowa. For them, it is breakfast, dinner, and supper. My late grandma used to call "lunch" a snack that you had after school. A very small difference that caused a lot of confusion throughout the week.

For example, I had a conversation with my grandpa about going over to his house to eat. I said something like "I'll swing by and we can have some dinner". To which he responded "Oh, are you coming over for dinner too?" To which I sighed, and tried to explain to him which meals I was going to spend at his house. This exchange repeated itself numerous times throughout the week. Not a big deal, I just chuckled to myself each time it happened. I'm a "city" boy now....

4 miles, 7:33 pace. I wondered aloud while running this one if I should be running this fast when I know that I can only do about 7:50 for 15 miles +. I'm honestly not too sure - so I guess I'll continue to plug away until I hear otherwise. If you hear that someone died at the Chicago Marathon (again) make sure that I'm still updating this blog.

Monday, August 11, 2008

A member of my team is a professional photographer on the side. He recently took the picture to the right in Auburn, MA while traveling for work. I was not only struk by how much I liked the photo, but also by the quote that he included with it in our monthly project newsletter:

When asked what the best camera to get for scenic photos, I say to get the cheapest camera they can find, under the stipulation that they take the remaining money that they would have otherwise spent and go on vacation somewhere beautiful. Being at the right place at the right time is a thousand times more important than the camera used.

This small lake in Auburn, MA was right outside of my hotel, so I took a short hike to enjoy the scenery and unwind. I even made a little chipmunk friend who followed me around for a while. I purposely waited to take photos of the lake until the light was right. Patience is really the key with most photography. Like many of my other photos, this was taken with my Canon SD800IS point-and-shoot camera. The IS (Image Stabilization) was really important with this photo since light was fading. If I had been willing to lug around fifty pounds of equipment, I was have had a 12-24mm lens on my D200 body, mounted to a tripod, set the aperture to somewhere around f/8, and expose for as long as needed. But it was a LOT simpler to just pull my pocket camera out, hold still, and press the button.

11ish miles at 8:35 pace. The GPS watch that I normally wear ran out of batteries during the run, so I didn't get a very accurate count of how far I was going.

I got to run in Pocahontas, IA again - which was as fun as last time. It was neat to run around the town and see all of the various people out and about. However, I think that if I had to do 100% of my running there I might go a bit bonkers.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

I have posted previously that I did not have an iPod until very recently. My wife got me a fun little silver iPod shuffle for my birthday which was a little bit under a month ago. I was very excited about the possibility of not only joining the 21st century, but also being able to listen to my own music while I run.

I have ran with it approximately 10 times. The last 3 times, it has died on me while running. The first time I thought that it was just because the batteries were dead. The second time, I thought that it was just a fluke. However, the third time (this morning) I knew something was up. Our President might say "fool me once, shame on you...... fool me twice....... can't, uhhhh, can't get fooled again!".

In addition to dying for a third time, when I plug it into my computer to charge / sync, it doesn't recognize that I have an iPod in the doc. Trouble. There are three likely causes for this:

I got a dud iPod

Sweat from running got into the inners of the iPod and messed it up

Steve Jobs is secretly trying to drive me mad

My money is on #3, but I think that I am going to have to take it to the Apple store to complain very shortly either way.

4 miles, 8:01 pace. This was my first run on gravel roads which was interesting. I tried to do my best to stay on the crest of the road which generally has the least amount of gravel. Also, I had forgotten my knee braces at my grandmother in law's place, so I was particularly careful to have a deliberate foot strike. Here are some pictures of where I was running (taken previously).

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I am in Iowa for the next few days and since I don't want to diviate from my schedule, I plan on running the same just like I was at home.

During my first run, I honestly didn't expect to see many people out jogging or walking but to my surprise, there were a fair amount of people out on the streets walking. Granted, almost all were above 70 years old, but I suppose that is how you get to be above 70 years old. You get out before 6:00am and get the blood flowing.

The other interesting thing about running around a small town was that there were no side walks - and the streets were arched HIGH. I could definitely feel the fact that I was running on a slant if I was too far to one side of the road. So, for the most part, I just ran in the middle of the street.... and cars were NEVER a problem.

Finally, I never realized how small the town is! I ran 7 miles this morning and pretty much ran to all 4 corners of the city, down main street, past the school, past the fairgrounds, past where my wife used to live and still had time / miles to kill putzing around among the various roads.

7 miles, 7:59 pace. Today's run was in and around Pocahontas, IA where I grew up. The run went ok, but I was a bit stiff and sore for the first few miles. I did however fall into a rhythm shortly there after and knocked out the remainder of the distance.

Monday, August 4, 2008

I was recently talking to Nick about something that he was going to tell his wife, but was going to wait until she had woken up from her nap. To which I agreed that it was probably a good idea. I then followed that that men should get a manual to the successful operation of women.

Chapter #1:Never, under ANY circumstances wake up a sleeping wife. EVER. I don't care if there is a money truck driving by and it is spilling money out the back. NEVER.

I wanted to follow up on my post where I said that I was super excited that my wife was going to be traveling for me to St Louis for work. Overall, I'd say that the experience was great! Here are a few reflections:

I believe that my wife has a new found respect for business travel and the toll it takes. Certainly she was not used to it, but either way I do know that she was very exhausted come Thursday afternoon.

Additionally, I do get some bonus points because I was able to prove to her that the team actually DOES eat at 8:00pm every day. Plus, it really does take us 2 hrs to eat. I wasn't making that up.

My wife was super excited to meet the team and had a positive reaction to everyone. This is especially important to me as I now call a number of my team members close friends.

My wife thinks that I am a huge "doorknob" (her words) because I am friends with the people in the hotel. She is probably just jealous.

I will say that it added a new level of complexity to traveling with her though. I often found it difficult to balance my work obligations, my personal schedule (running etc), and the social calendar that Tera had put together. Overall, I averaged about 5.5 hrs of sleep and 9 hours of work per day. I'll admit that I was a little exhausted come Thursday afternoon as well!

In summery, I really had fun having her in town with me. Hopefully now that she has figured out how to get all of her stuff into one carry on suitcase, we'll do it more often!

Saturday, August 2, 2008

I don't believe that I have posted about them before, but my local office has quarterly all office meetings. Generally speaking, these meetings have approximately 150 people attending and last 1/2 a day. In addition to the meeting, we generally have at least a happy hour. During the summer and the winter, we have a larger event. I am the lead in the planning efforts of these meetings.

Generally speaking, I really do like planning them. It mixes up the day and allows me to interact with people from the local office. (Granted, I do a LOT of complaining about these events during the planning stages. The people close to me are very familiar with this and I am sure are VERY tired of hearing about it.) Also, probably one of the best perks is that I get to spend all sorts of firm money! The budget for the last event was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000. Not chump change to be sure.

Well, the summer meeting was yesterday and went essentially OK. We had the event at Worlds of Fun a local amusement park. We had great attendance and overall I believe that everyone had a good time. The company bought tickets for everyone to get into the park, paid for dinner, parking and spending money, and also had free massages on site, offered free go cart races, and had a scavenger hunt where people could win prizes for finding random things inside of the park.

While I am glad that my party planning is over for at least a few months if not longer, I am happy knowing that if I needed to throw together a impromptu wedding, I could probably do it within a week. Shoot, I'd even throw in a 1/2 day power point presentation for free.

I'm not really sure how to 'count' what I did today. It was another gloriously hot day. 75 when I started, 84 when I finished. I think that I heard 70% humidity.

I was clicking along at 8:25 pace when I got a really bad case of runners gut around mile 13. So bad in fact that I almost went into a convenience store, no shirt on - dripping with sweat, to use their bathroom. I decided against it as I wasn't sure if they would let me in there without a shirt on. So, I thought that I could hopefully try to walk it off. Which I did - but it took almost a mile and about 15 minutes. So, my final pace was 9:25, and my final mileage was 16 miles. So, I suppose that I could report my running a number of ways:

16 miles, 9:25 pace15 miles, 8:25 pace16 miles, 8:25 pace

So, for the purpose of this blog, I reported it the best way possible. Hey, why not right?

Legaleeeeese

This blog is meant for entertainment purposes only.For that matter, it even does that half-assed.I am happy to provide advice and tips, but have no technical "training" to provide medical or professional advice.So, ask away - I love to help.But, if you get hurt, can’t blame me!!